Timothy J. Mara, 59, Dies; Former Co-owner of Giants

By GERALD ESKENAZI

Published: June 2, 1995

Timothy J. Mara, a grandson of the football Giants' founder and a former co-owner whose outspoken criticism of the Giants led to a long family feud, died yesterday at the Jupiter Medical Center in Florida. He was 59.

The cause of death was Hodgkins disease, a team spokesman said.

Mr. Mara's father, Jack, and an uncle, Wellington Mara, were named the co-owners of the Giants in 1930 by Timothy Mara, who had put together the team in 1925 for a $500 franchise fee. Over the next 40 years, the Mara family presided over a team that defined football in New York. From 1956 through 1963, the Giants played in six National Football League championship games, winning the title in 1956, and many of the players became the darlings of Madison Avenue.

Tim Mara grew up on the Giants' sidelines, befriending many players. Frank Gifford, now a television personality, yesterday described Mr. Mara as his closest friend when he was a rookie halfback in 1952.

After working in the front office during his school days, Mr. Mara joined the Giants' organization full time after he was graduated from Iona College in 1957, later serving as a vice president and treasurer.

After his father died in 1965, Mr. Mara became a co-owner with his uncle Wellington Mara just as the team was entering a downward period that would last 15 years.

Before the 1979 season, Tim embarrassed Wellington, who had taken on the dual roles of running the football and business sides of the team, by urging the hiring of George Allen as head coach. Mr. Allen, an often controversial former Washington Redskins' coach, was not someone Wellington Mara approved of, but Tim Mara already disapproved of the way his uncle's personnel and coaching selections had turned out.

Finally, Commissioner Pete Rozelle mediated the dispute between the feuding nephew and uncle by recommending that the Giants hire a general manager, George Young, who would make most of the policy decisions. Mr. Young eventually hired Bill Parcells as coach, oversaw the drafting of players like Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, and the Giants once again became an elite N.F.L. team, winning Super Bowls after the 1986 and 1990 seasons.

But Tim Mara -- 20 years younger in age, outlook and life style -- and his uncle remained divided. They sat in separate owner's boxes at home games, their offices were separated, and they communicated mostly through Mr. Young, who would hear one co-owner's suggestions on football matters, then go down the hall to the other's office and run the suggestions past him.

After the 1990 season, Tim Mara, representing his mother and his sister, sold their half-interest in the team to Preston Robert Tisch, the billionaire head of the Loews Corporation, for $75 million.

"We agreed on the deal before the Super Bowl and didn't close till afterward," Mr. Tisch recalled yesterday. "He didn't change one word of what we had agreed on even though they became the Super Bowl champions."

The nephew and the uncle were finally brought together last year by Mr. Gifford.

"They hadn't been communicating," Mr. Gifford said yesterday. "They had totally different life styles." But prodded by Mr. Gifford, they talked of games won and lost, of Giants and family memories.

The 78-year-old Wellington Mara declined to be interviewed yesterday, but said through a spokesman: "A death in the family is a very personal thing. I hope people respect my privacy at this time."

After moving to Florida following the sale of his partnership, Tim Mara was active in charitable causes. But he returned to New York every football season and retained his close friendship with Mr. Parcells, now head coach of the New England Patriots.

Mr. Mara, whose marriage ended in divorce, is survived by his mother, Helen Mara Nugent of New York, and a sister, Maura Mara Concannon of Larchmont, N.Y.